Very biased article! Full of deceit and innuendo and self-praise by the cult deviant Puranajan and his Gopi bhava club. He later went ahead and blamed Srila Prabhupada for child abuse in the Movement. I suspect he is crazy or a cia controlled opposition.
ISKCON HISTORY ACCOUNT
The (11) eleven original cheater Gurus from Left to Right:
celebrating simultanious Guru-Puja equal to Prabhupada – the greatest offense
| 1. Harikesa Swami (mad-guru) 2. Jayatirtha dasa Adhikari (dead) 3. Hansadutta Swami (drunkard) 4. Hridayananda Gosvami (tits-guru) 5. Ramesvara Swami (girls-guru) 6. Bhagavan dasa Adhikari (nazi militant) |
7. Kirtanananda Swami (dead) 8. Tamala Krsna Gosvami (dead) 9. Satsvarupa dasa Gosvami (insane-guru) 10. Bhavananda Gosvami (homo-sex) 11. Jayapataka Swami (mad militant) |
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Comment: The GBC Was the “Enemy” of Srila Prabhupada from 1970 Until Today
TRUE ACCOUNT OF ISKCON’S HISTORY
http://www.harekrsna.org/pada/themes/ihistbig.htm
PART1 1976-1985 – Tama-Krishna, Hansadutta, Rohini-Kumar, Berkeley-temple, guru shooting
PART2 1985-1986 – SULOCHANA: David attacks Goliath, Kirtanananda, New Vrindavana, faggot gurus
PART3 1986 – Iskcon worships homosexual gurus, Sulocana murdered, Kirtanananda massaged by small boys
ISKCON HISTORY ACCOUNT
PART 1 – 1976-1985 – Tama-Krishna, Hansadutta, Rohini-Kumar, Berkeley-temple, guru shooting
History update (ref: history 101, pada, 31. Mar. 2000)
1) In the mid 1970s, some of the leaders were trying to promote very bizare deviations from Srila Prabhupada’s instructions. Tamal Krishna Goswami, one of the big leaders at that time, had a “travelling bus program” which he called “Radha Damodara.” Most of the members of his program were young unmarried men who were called “brahmacharis.” Unfortunately, when the “Radha Damodar” bus program would visit Srila Prabhupada’s temples, the visitors would try to convince the temple’s unmarried men to leave, and to join Tamal’s traveling bus program. This started to severely subvert the management scheme of Srila Prabhupada by draining away needed manpower from his temples.
The basic physical infrastructure of ISKCON at that time was the temples. And the temples were starting to face severe difficulties due to the “manpower draining war” that they were constantly engaged in with Tamal’s program. The situation became very intense with temple presidents and other managers comparing Tamal’s program to raiding pirates who were “stealing” the manpower.
Many of the temples at that time were managed by married men called “householders” or “grihasthas.” One of the arguments presented by Tamal and his party was that the unmarried men should not “associate” with either married men, or the ladies who were living in the temples. This was alleged to be “maya” or the path to illusion. In other words, it was supposed to be more “spiritually advanced” for the unmarried males to travel with Tamal and his party. Oddly, this criticism of Srila Prabhupada’s temple program was the same argument given by some of his deviated God brothers from the 1936 era in India: there should not be any married men or any women living in the temples. Some speculate that there was collusion between Tamal and some of these deviants even in the early 1970s.
Simultaneously, Tamal’s group started to say that the “housholders” are sort of second class citizens, and they should all be sent somewhere like Australia to live on farms. Of course, this prospect would apparently leave no one at the temples in the USA? Most of the unmarried males would be out on the road on Tamal’s bus program. Then, most of the “householders,” who were really the temple’s managers, would be packed off to live in a remote part of the world, perhaps in the Australian outback? And this new “householder farm” program would also be of Tamal’s design and perhaps he would be in control of this as well?
In short it seems under Tamal’s plan there would gradually be no temples, or at best very stunted and deteriorated temples in the USA. Instead, there would a pack of traveling buses, which coincidentally, would all under his control? This was apparently designed to shift control of the manpower, money, and assets away from Srila Prabhupada’s hands and over to Tamal’s? And Tamal’s plan was working quite effectively. Indeed, it was paralyzing Srila Prabhupada’s whole mission. Temples were gradually losing key personl such as priests, treasurers, preachers, cooks, mechanics, carpenters and other needed members. Meanwhile, Tamal’s “Radha Damodar” bus program was growing by leaps and bounds.
This came to a head at the March, 1976 Mayapura meetings. The temple presidents held their own meeting separate from the “Governing Body Commission” (GBC) members and they determined that Tamal’s program was going to eventually destroy Srila Prabhupada’s temples. Srila Prabhupada agreed with the temple presidents and he declared that Tamal should be sent to China to preach. Tamal reacted by angrily opposing the plan to go to China (as reported in the book by Hari Sauri)… to be continued
History 1976.2 (ref: pada 02. Apr. 2000a)
…This came to a head at the March, 1976 Mayapura meetings. The temple presidents held their own meeting separate from the “Governing Body Commission” (GBC) members and they determined that Tamal’s program was going to eventually destroy Srila Prabhupada’s temples. Srila Prabhupada agreed with the temple presidents and he declared that Tamal should be sent to China to preach.
Tamal reacted by angrily opposing Srila Prabhupada’s plan to go to China (as was also reported in a book by Hari Sauri). He was reputed to have said that the “Radha Damodar” bus program was “his” program and that it could not be taken away by Srila Prabhupada. Tamal was reported to have expressed a lot of anger towards Srila Prabhupada at this time. In other words, it looked to some of us that Srila Prabhupada had “caught” Tamal in a plan to subvert the movement away from his control by various tricks, and Tamal was angry because he had been caught. Of course other “big leaders” and GBC men had also argued with Srila Prabhupada as well, yet oddly this was not taken too seriously at the time. In short, Srila Prabhupada had to constantly “keep in check” the overly ambitious plotting of some of his “top leaders.” And the plots were sometimes thinly veiled takeover attempts, if not plots to replace Srila Prabhupada.
This phenomena was very strange to some of us. Srila Prabhupada was supposed to be the guru and yet some of the “leaders” would openly argue with him as we had witnessed on a number of occaisions. The problem, it seems, is that some of the leaders had the attitude that Srila Prabhupada could not manage properly, that they knew better than he did, or worse that Srila Prabhupada was “in the way” of their plans. Perhaps this is why Srila Prabhupada made so many complaints directed towards his leaders, for example he said repeatedly that the GBC could not manage. And he even had to ask rather bluntly, “Has the GBC become more than guru maharaja”? In 1977, Srila Prabhupada would even say, “Have I become a burden”? Thus, when it was finally reported that Srila Prabhupada had complained that he was bing given poison, it made sense that this type of action was possible.
One of our personal favorite devotees in those days was Vishnujana swami. He had a travelling bus program of a different type than Tamal’s. He would go to college campuses or similar locations with his musical “band.” Then he would lecture on Krishna’s philosophy and hand out “Krishna prasadam” or food offered to God. Vishnujana was actually making many devotees for the ISKCON society with his program. Yet he was always being criticized behind his back by Tamal’s group.
Tamal would complain that Vishnujana’s program was not strict, that it was not distributing enough books, that is was a diversion from the real program, namely his “Radha Damadora” bus program. The worst complaint was that Vishnujana was not bringing in enough “laxmi” or money. Tamal’s party also invented some other complaints towards Vishnujana’s program, almost making it sound like it was a travelling orgy. Naturally this dicouraged and depressed Vishnujana swami. And later on, by hook and crook, Tamal was able to become the de facto “new manager” of Vishnujana’s bus program.
Some say this is why Vishnujana decided to leave his bus program altogether and get married (he had taken vows of celibacy as a sannyasa). We may never know what really happened though, since Vishnujana swami suddenly “disappeared” and was said to have commited suicide in India. Tamal was one of the last persons ever seen talking to him. Later on, the sannyasi Gopi janaballabha also commited suicide in a St. Louis pond, and how did you guess, he did this just after talking to Tamal. And yes, yet another devotee tried to commit suicide by beating himself on the head with a hammer, just after talking to Tamal, and who knows how many other victims there are?
With the departure of Vishnujana swami and the rising up of Tamal, this started a very mechanical, impersonal and greedy era of “preaching.” Some “sannyasis” started to alter the book distribution process at that time into a sort of cheating business. In fact, a video was made showing the devotees how to “short change” book sales customers and engage in vartious cheating tactics to “increase the pick” (i.e. the amount of money one could extract from a book sales customer). This was creating a very bad reaction from the public since word was spreading that the Hare Krishnas are a bunch of cheaters.
I decided to try to change this downhill momentum by starting the traditional sankirtana process in Hollywood, a sort of revival of the Vishnujana spirit. I got a few devotees together and we would go out every day dressed in the traditional devotional garb, and we would do “harinama samkirtana” or the actual “chanting, singing and dancing” that Lord Chaitanya’s movement is supposed to be based upon. This was viewed with extreme suspicion by the big sannyasis at the time, who wanted to increase the “money changers” program and not the traditional samkirtana.
At this time, Srila Prabhupada’s books about Lord Chaitanya’s life had come out and so we also started to read these books in a class with our samkirtana group. This was something that the “sannyasis” decided they had to halt, just like they had to halt Vishnujana. And so one day Tamal told Srila Prabhupada that there was a group of men in Los Angeles that was smoking pot, dressing in saris, and they were performing illicit activities. Moreover this group had accepted another guru and they were linked to the deviant Nitai dasa. There was even a rumor that I had made some woman pregnant in the meetings? Evidentally, some people were very envious of us.
Of course, this was not what our group was doing, Tamal’s party had just made up some rumors to try to discredit our program. Revatinandana dasa called me aside at that time and said, “You guys aren’t smoking pot and wearing saris are you”? I said, “No, why”? Revatinandana replied, “Well, Tamal just told Srila Prabhupada this morning that you are doing that, and that your new guru is Nitai’s. Tamal is also making up things about me so I am leaving ISKCON.”
A short time later Tamal arranged a sort of “meeting” with Srila Prabhupada, me, Sulochana and his group of sannyasis. Seeing that they were making up things about us, and that the whole sannyasi clique was there –versus– the few of us, we decided not to challenge them in the meeting and start an ugly accusations shouting match in Srila Prabhupada’s presence. Rather I’d write a letter to Srila Prabhupada explaining the situation. I then wrote him a letter saying that I had not been engaging in these illicit things and that I was not working with Nitai and accepting another guru and so on.
Pusta Krishna swami then came up to me a few days later and said, “Wow, how did you like that nice letter of reply that you got back from Srila Prabhupada”? I said, “What letter”? Pusta Krishna look startled and replied, “Well Srila Prabhupada dictated and signed a nice reply to your letter, you mean you never got it?” Then I realized that either Tamal or members of his group were hiding Srila Prabhupada’s personal letters. As a side note, another point often overlooked by Tamal and his colleagues is that a devotee may also have a somewhat internal relationship with his spiritual master. One can try to short change the external situation, but a devotee can be aware of his spiritual master on another level and be connected on a level that can not be penetrated with exteral tricks.
When Tamal spotted me in the temple a few days later he came up and said, “I know you Puranjana, you are just waiting for Srila Prabhupada to die so you can sit in his seat.” I left the temple and was outside, looking a little depressed probably, so a devotee came up and he said, “What is wrong”? I said, “Tamal just said that I am wating for Srila Prabhupada to die so I can sit in his seat.” The devotee replied, “Don’t let it get to you, he says that all the time to everybody.” Then I realized, maybe this is how Tamal gets people to commit suicide? Of course, Tamal was obsessed with thinking about “who” was going to be sitting in Srila Prabhupada’s seat after his departure, and about a year later, it was Tamal who was sitting in his seat. His ambition to sit in Srila Prabhupada’s seat was so powerful, he had to project it on others so he could rationalize it within himself. As no small surprise at the current date, twenty-four years later, Tamal’s clique are the prime suspects surrounding the poisoning of Srila Prabhupada.
In any event, Srila Prabhupada wrote another letter shortly thereafter, which he had sent to all of the temples, telling them that they had to stop the “short changing” program instituted by some of these leaders. Also in 1976, Tamal’s “friend” Bhavananda “swami” had been caught in homosexual acts in Mayapura. Tamal tried to discredit the eye-witness and suppress the whole incident, just to protect his friend. The eye-witness was seen later in South India complaining that he had been drummed out of Mayapura because he had complained of the homsexuality of a sannyasi there. So the pattern of homosexuals being covered-up by Tamal’s sannyasi clique was being established.
There were also reports that Bhavananda would “bloop” and go back to his homosexual friends, and he would “party” with people like Andy Warhol, and that Tamal would drive to those places to bring his friend back to ISKCON. So, on the one hand there was a drive to get rid of people who were actually preaching like Vishnujana, or to drive out people like me who were trying to re-establish the traditional samkirtana. And on the other hand, there was a rise in the money changers and the homosexuals, and this element were being given a boost mainly due to the influence of Tamal’s sannyasi clique.
Srila Prabhupada himself was saying at this time that he did not agree with the managers, and indeed the managers were refusing to go to China when he ordered them to do so. And so he would say that he is too old to drop everything and focus on managing. He wanted to see his books printed mainly, because he knew that would be his lasting contribution. He had hoped that all of his followers would at least read the books and that this would be the actual basis upon which his society would develop. Srila Prabhupada’s plan was very simple. The leaders would not be able to go too far astray since the edcuated mass of devotees would not allow that. Evidentally, as it would turn out, not many of his followers actually read his books?
OFF TO BERKELEY, August 1984 (ref: History 1984, pada 02. Apr. 2000b)
It was winter in Mount Shasta and there was maybe a foot of snow on the ground. I was out shopping in my old Ford truck when I saw a classic Mercedes car parked on the side of the road. This car looked familiar. Was this (the “guru”) Hansadutta’s car? I parked behind the car and after some time Hansadutta “swami” and his faithful servant Chakravarti dasa emerged from a store. We greeted each other and Hansadutta invited me to come over to visit him at another devotee’s house in Mount Shasta.
When I arrived the next day Hansadutta was resting and Chakravarti explained that Hansadutta’s condition was that of being “overdosed” on several drugs and alcohol. This was creating a toxic condition whereby he was sleeping most of the day, and in fact he was only awake about one hour a day. In other words, Hansadutta was close to dying. The Berkeley temple was spending several thousand dollars per week on a professional “detoxification center” near Golden Gate Park for their “guru,” but it was not working. I asked, “Why is he taking so much intoxication”? And Chakravarti said, “It is those constant chronic migraines. He just can’t take them anymore. And that is why we came to Mount Shasta, for the health spas.”
A short while later Hansadutta emerged from his rest and we all sat around a large table. “I think I should just die and get it over,” said Hansadutta. I said, “No! You cannot just die right now, you will leave behind so many confused people, especially your followers. You have to set them straight.” “I can’t,” said Hansadutta, “I’ve tried to tell them that I am not their guru, that their guru is really Srila Prabhupada, but they will not listen. They insist on continuing to worship me.” Of course I was not convinced that he had really tried to convince them effectively.
“We have to start by dismantling the bogus guru appointment,” I said. “This is the first level of illusion that needs to be corrected, the GBC’s saying that they were ‘appointed’ by Srila Prabhupada as his guru successors.” Hansadutta agreed and he added, “That is right. The eleven of us held secret meetings after Srila Prabhupada departed where we hammered out this whole bogus appointment thing. Ramesvara and Kirtanananda wanted to leave the meeting right away, saying that they already had tons of people waiting in line for initiation. But Satsvarupa said, ‘Wait, you cannot go yet. We have to make sure we all give the same answers to the same questions, or this appointment thing will fall apart in two weeks.’ So, Satsvarupa played ‘Devil’s advocate’ and he mock debated us until we all got this whole appointment idea worked out solidly. It is all a big scam.”
I further told Hansadutta that the cause of his headaches was probably from taking the karma of disciples. Srila Prabhupada had told us not to even let people touch our feet casually, or we would get some karma. And we would get sick and have to suffer. Yet your GBC’s gurus have hundreds of people washing their feet? Moreover, sitting in the seat of the pure devotee is very offensive, so you will all get a negative reaction for that as well. All considered, constant chronic migraines is probably just a warning for the reactions that you will get if you do not stop this now. Hansadutta shook his head knowingly and said, “Yes, this is probably all true.”
So then I detailed a plan of action. We would have to stop all forms of his being worshipped and re-establish the worship of Srila Prabhupada. He seemed to be very happy and relived at this prospect and he said, “OK, let us do it. We can start in the Berkeley temple.” He said he would give me a facility to stay there, and a plan was made for me to go there in the near future.
A short while later our little family landed on the Berkeley temple’s doorstep. Hansadutta was there at the time, but he seemed very surprised that we had actually finally made it as agreed. Most of his followers were very stiff and tense, since he had apparently not told them that we were coming. I already had a reputation for “challenging the gurus,” “being an offender to the eleven appointed pure devotees,” and so on, thus some of his followers looked a little grim. He held an emergency meeting right then, but I was not invited. I am not sure what he told his followers but he at least told them to be polite, and perhaps, not to beat us up, which was the fate that some dissidents met there.
Our presence there was of course quite a shock to his followers since I would walk around and say, “Oh these gurus were never appointed, Hansadutta admits that they all lied.” Many of them were very angry, yet they were forcibly restrained from taking steps to silence me due to Hansadutta’s order. Meanwhile, all this was turning out to be too much for Hansadutta himself. Our presence was reminding him of the whole bogus platform of his “guru” post. So after a few days I heard him shouting in the temple foyer, “Tell a lie so big no one will believe that it could be a lie,” and he was saying this repeatedly. A few of his followers finally came to his rescue and they had to lead him away to his room.
He was having a sort of nervous breakdown …due to my presence probably? This culminated exactly one week, to the day, later. Hansadutta went out in his Toyota Jeep with four loaded guns and he shot out the Cadillac dealer’s plate-glass windows, and then he shot out the windows of Ledger’s Liquor store. Both buildings were occupied at the time and the patrons “hit the deck.” A policeman stopped Hansadutta’s Jeep shortly thereafter. And officer Joe Sanchez told me later, “That officer shit his pants when he saw four guns in the front of that Jeep. He thought this guy in the Jeep is whacked and he has another gun hidden somewhere and he is going to use it on me.” A bottle of liquor was found on the floor of the Jeep, and Hansadutta was carrying nearly eight thousand dollars cash on his person. Hansadutta was arrested for firing a gun at occupied buildings. And that was our introduction to the Berkeley temple! –to be continued–
HISTORY 1985 (ref: 1985 and news, 03. Apr. 2000)
VOODOO HEXED GURUS?
Hansadutta was arrested for shooting at an occupied building. Immediately after the “shooting of buildings incident,” Rohini Kumar swami started to organize a big “fire sacrifice” behind the Berkeley temple. He was an original disciple of Srila Prabhupada but had somehow strayed into becomming Hansadutta’s cheif apologist. I asked Rohini Kumar what the sacrifice was all about and he said that he had to counteract “demoniac curses” that had been placed upon Hansadutta by the other GBC gurus. Haripada dasa also told me that he had been in Mayapura recently and he had heard that two other GBC gurus had hired “black magic tantrics” to curse Hansadutta, and these curses were the cause of Hansadutta’s strange behavior.
We were still very new to the Berkeley scene so we could not ask the rather obvious questions: “Why would Hansadutta’s ten other Jesus-like co-appointed colleagues curse him in the first place? Why would one Jesus-like saint –curse– another one to act like a devil? And would a bona fide Jesus-like saint be influenced by the black magic voodoo of a hired tantric ghost exorcist: at all”?, and so on ad infinitum.
Yet I have to admit that it was simply amazing to see firsthand the lengths that these people would take to keep up the illusion that they were still, somehow or other, gurus and pure devotees and that all of the problems they were experiencing were not due to lack of purity but some kind of voodoo hexes. In sum, layers, upon layers, upon layers, upon layers, of lies, more lies, and so on and so forth. Of course even I could see that when you have to say that “the Devil made me do it” you are running out of rabbits to pull out of your hat. So the scene was actually hopeful since it appeared to be getting near the endgame. It was.
DID YOU SEE OUR GURU SHOOTING?
The next problem for Hansadutta’s people was actually a legal one. Hansadutta was seen by a number of eye-witnesses shooting at buildings. So, a few of his thugs went around to intimidate some of the witnesses. “Did you see our guru shooting at any buildings, and by the way we know where you live, and we are just like our guru.” And the probable reply, “Who me? Well, I did not see anything”! This seems to have helped his case, that and the fact that the temple hired from among the best lawyers in the Bay Area to handle the case, spending what one devotee estimates was “at least $100,000 for the lawyers, $25,000 for court costs, and $10,000 for damages.”
Then, a few weeks after the shooting, Hansadutta lost another $12,000 cash he was carrying in a bag. It becomes painfully obvious here why the gurukulis were being starved, beaten and molested. These leaders were spending money like water on themselves while they really seem to have had no idea whatsoever what was happening to the citizens of ISKCON? And nevermind that the temple had also been spending thousands per week for detoxification, percodans, and then there were the guru’s vehicles, buildings, gun collections and who knows what else. Even millionaires do not spend money on themselves like this?
As a side note, I noticed a piece of mail one day in the temple foyer, it was a colorful postcard from a Reno gambling hall: “To our valued customer” and it was made out in the legal name of Hansadutta. By the way, Hansadutta eventually lost his case, and he pleaded “guilty by reason of insanity.” He asked the judge, “If you have all kinds of drugs, alcohol and women, won’t you go crazy too”? And so he was left with some kind of probation. A lot of devotees agreed, unless he had spent a small fortune on his case, he would have gone to jail.
COMMUNICATION WITH THE SPIRIT WORLD
I needed a break to help crack the door open and sure enough Krishna sent one along right away. Hansadutta’s girlfriend, actually the wife of another devotee, brought her favorite book to be sold at the temple’s book shop. The title was something like “Communication With the Spirit World,” and it was a fantastic blend of ghost stories, weird speculations, and an apparent account of how Jesus is influenced by Satanic influences. Even our worst opponents at the temple could not help but break out laughing at some of the crazy passages.
So, I got one copy and walked around the building with my finger in between a few pages, and then I’d open it up and say, “Hey, did you see this page yet”? It was literally a God send since even my opponents would slap their knees and start laughing. His followers would say, “Yes, what a bunch of crap that book is, must be that Hansadutta is trying to please his new lady friend.” So, this kind of helped break the ice for me, and it allowed me to go into more elaborate discussions. For example, what kind of guru reads this trash? Then yet another dedicated follower of Hansadutta’s told everyone that under the cover of Hansadutta’s “Bhagavad Gita” was the book “The Tibetan Book Of the Dead.” This caused yet another wave of doubts. That the emporer had no clothes on was getting more obvious.
ROHINI KUMAR FINALLY CRACKS
Rohini Kumar swami was really trying hard to avoid me. For the fist six months he would barely talk to me. Yet one day he invited me into his room and asked me what the basic problem is. I said that there was never any appointment of eleven gurus, even Hansadutta agreed. So we went over and over the May 28th transcript. We had at that time a more complete version than the one I got in 1980, but it was not as complete as the one that was released in 1990. The more we studied it together the more he had to conclude that it did not appoint any gurus. He finally had a complete breakdown one day and he said, “OK fine, you are right, Srila Prabhupada never appointed any gurus.” And then he wrote a little paper explaining that the GBC had misrepresented the idea of guru. This helped me a lot since he was quite respected there at the time.
As we talked further it turned out that he had access to Srila Prabhupada’s will, the Topanga talks transcript (where Tamal admits there was no guru appointment) and maybe other documents, yet this was locked in the temple’s safe. So I got him to sneak in one day, open the safe, and pull these documents out. I then photo-copied the will and began to circulate copies of it. Who knows if the current copies now in circulation are copies from the one that we got at that time? It was never openly distributed by the GBC, at least not that we know of. “The will” cast more doubt on the appointment issue, since it specifies that Srila Prabhupada wanted his initiated disciples to manage his properties indefinately –after his departure.
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PART 2 – 1985-1986 – SULOCHANA: David attacks Goliath, Kirtanananda, New Vrindavana, faggot gurus
1985 SULOCHANA: David attacks Goliath (ref: 1985 Sulocana, 04. Apr. 2000)
Sulochana (Steve Bryant) called me in Berkeley from Texas to tell me had made his final break with “New Vrindavana,” the ISKCON West Virginia community that was being run by Kirtanananda swami (Keith Ham). Sulochana explained that Kirtanananda swami had taken away his wife (Jane Bryant) by “initiating” her as his disciple and then ordering her to leave. Sulochana said that this had happened because he had started to disagree with the swami –but the swami wanted absolute allegience.
Sulochana also noted that Kirtanananda had a pattern. He would “break up the marriage” of a dissenter using the ploy that the dissenter was “not surrendered to Krishna.” This was a tool he used discourage others from dissenting. Indeed, Jane Wallace of CBS news said later that she could not help but notice that many of the women at New Vridnavana looked like they had children from several different fathers. In short, it looked like Kirtanananda had de facto encouraged some of the women there to have sex with one man and then another by various means. Sulochana summarized this tactic, “Take away a man’s nookie (sex) to control him. And later this man would crawl back to surrender to Kirtanananda, knowing that Kirtanananda would give this man yet another woman as a reward for cooperation.” Apparently, this tactic has been successfully used in other fanatical cults like Jim Jones, David Koresh and others.
The “temple managers” at New Vrindavana had helped Sulochana’s wife file for a divorce and she was simultaneously provided with “a new husband” who was loyal to Kirtanananda. Sulochana further explained that when he had tried to leave the compound with his children the New Vrindavana “enforcers” caught up with him in their vehicles and they forced him to give back his children –at gun point. Unfortunately, the temple had also hired a lawyer and helped Jane obtain temporary legal custody of the children, so Sulochana could not get help from the police. And just before Sulochana phoned me he had phoned Kirtanananda swami, only to be told “we will fight (for the children)” by the swami.
Sulochana was calling me from the highway and he was heading to Los Angeles. I told him to keep in touch since his “falling out” with Kirtanananda incident might be useful to expose, overall, the whole “eleven bogus gurus” project. A few months later Sulochana called to tell me that he was now on the highway again and he was heading towards San Francisco from Los Angeles, and he planned to meet with me. He rented a tiny room in a motel on University Avenue in Berkeley, and we started to discuss possible ideas of how he could recover his children.
Sulochana was also very excited because just before he had left Los Angeles he had purchased a “pirated microfiche copy” of all of Srila Prabhupada’s letters. He said, “We are going to bring the GBC’s gurus down with these letters.” That is because the letters offer a stark view of how Srila Prabhupada had wanted the GBC to manage; How he distrusted some key GBC members who were now allegedly gurus; How he did not want the GBC to consult with the Gaudiya Matha’s homosexual guru project, and so on and so forth. When we read some of the letters it was very much evident why the GBC had wanted them to be suppressed and hidden.
A few days later Sulochana informed me, “Ramesvara found out where I am staying and he called me to threaten me. He wants me to return the letter’s microfiche and not publish any of these letters –or else.” “Or else what”?, I asked. “Or else I will be dead meat on the hook,” Sulochana replied. We looked at each other and started to laugh hysterically for five minutes. We knew immediately that these letters must therefore be very, very important and they must contain information that the GBC is trying to hide.
And we also knew that we were going to publish the letters anyway. We just could not stop laughing for quite awhile either. We both agreed, the GBCs must have lost their minds if they thought that they “owned” Srila Prabhupada, and that they could hide his light under their dark cloud. In short, the GBC was making it a law, “It is forbidden to quote from Srila Prabhupada –or else you will be dead meat.” Of course, if you want to quote from the GBC’s homosexual pedophile gurus, that is fine! And the GBC says further that these homosexuals are gurus who are as pure as God. And they have some violent ex-convicts who will beat your head in with an aluminum baseball bat if you disagree with their homosexual worship project. That is what we were going up against and we joked about it.
Sulochana had a cheap little computer that was an odd discontinued style made by Commodore, but it seemed to work fine. In other words he was severely “under funded” to go after a multi-million dollar worldwide bogus guru cult. He said that he had purchased the computer to write his book, which he wanted to call “The Guru Business.” Mostly, he intended to use quotes from the letters to make an expose of how Srila Prabhupada doubted the GBC and therefore it is impossible that he would have appointed any of these GBCs as his and Krishna’s “pure devotee successors.”
At the same time we were both very aware that these GBC and so-called gurus could be very dangerous and that we could be killed at any second by exposing them. I explained to Sulochana that the work I was doing in Berkeley, going after Hansadutta’s empire, was very risky. Perhaps the risk was lesser due to the fact that Hansadutta had a reputation as a burnt out, womanizing, beer drinking drug addict. Exposing him was relatively easy at least compared to some of the other GBC’s gurus. And besides a lot of his followers already knew he was on his way out. Yet Hansadutta still had some loyal “violent criminal types” who could cause me untold mayhem at any time.
In fact, officer Joe Sanchez had made 73 felony arrests at the Berkeley temple in a few years because Hansadutta had a tendency to attract the violent criminal and felon type of follower. There was a large poster hanging in different places all over the temple “Guru Means Heavy,” with a picture of Hansadutta wearing mirrored sun glasses and a hooded sweater. It looked exactly like the mug shot of the uni-bomber that was later found in the post office. This photo had been in the 1980 San Francisco newspapers with the caption “The Machine Gun Swami,” after Hansadutta had been arrested with a machine gun in the trunk of his car.
Hansadutta was also selling his musical album in the temple at the time I met with Sulochana: “Guru, guru on the wall, who is the heaviest of them all? Whose disciples are the worst? Who could I give my last shirt? –I once saw a guru, a fantastic dancer, Holy gangster, carefree prankster,” and so on. At the start of this song is the unmistakable sound of machine gun fire. In other words “Guru means heavy” really means: he has some heavy gangster or ex-convict followers, and if you disagree with “guru,” you can end up being beaten or killed. That was not only the message of 1985, indeed that –still is– the de facto message even now in the year 2000 from the hard core sector of the GBC’s gurus. People are still getting threats of violence and so on, although it has diminished substantially thanks mainly to Sulochana exposing it so widely. Of course, it could be said today, now that it seems evident that members of the GBC party poisoned Srila Prabhupada, we can readily understand why this party hates his followers as well.
Kirtanananda was an even more risky target than Hansadutta. He was highly respected in ISKCON at that time and he was one of the biggest leaders of the GBC. He had a lot more power and no small amount of potentially violent fanatical followers. I told Sulochana that our biggest local problem was that if we attacked Kirtanananda from Berkeley, then Hansadutta might be asked to help suppress us by Kirtanananda. And Hansadutta might be convinced by Kirtanananda to move against both of us since he had not cut his sympathy for the GBC’s bogus guru project. That could be a problem. As it turned out, it was a major problem later on.
We noted that both Hansadutta and Kirtanananda had a lot in common. They had both put their pictures on Srila Prabhupada’s altars in the mid 1970s and had tried to establish their own worship. This had completely disgusted Srila Prabhupada, making him say that at least in the 1936 Gaudiya Matha they waited until their guru was actually departed before the envious imitator sector rushed in to sit in their guru’s seat.
And of course Hansadutta and Kirtanananda had other common traits. They both had reputed homosexuals, violent ex-criminals, and child molesters in their camps. They both had a reputation for orchestrating violence on dissenters. They were both volatile mavericks. They both had farms where people were alleged to have disappeared. They both had followers who had many guns. They were both alleged to be engaged in illicit sex with followers. They were both preaching that an apocolypse or WW III would happen soon. They both had delusions of being as good as Jesus. They both were writing their own books which were displacing Srila Prabhupada’s books. They were both making alleged homosexuals into sannyasis. They were both dressing their followers in the same style of hooded sweater tops. They both had their own tape ministries, as if their words were as good as Srila Prabhupada’s, and so on and so forth. Thus, me and Sulochana realized we were fighting the same type of characteristics, so why not combine our efforts? Of course, this would probably cause Hansadutta and Kirtanananda to combine their efforts, which could be deadly for us. Oddly, we almost predicted the near future alliance that Hansadutta would make with Kirtanananda to combat us, just by going through their character traits, since they were actually very similar in psychological make-up, modus operandi and so on.
In short, this was going to be a battle royal in any event and we both knew it. We discussed how it was possible that one or both of us could end up dead. “I just hope they don’t slowly tear me into little pieces and put the pieces into a meat grinder and feed me to the New Vrindavana dogs while I’m still alive,” Sulochana would say. Then I would say, “I just hope they use a large caliber gun on me like a .44 magnum, I just hate those little .22 bird banger guns.” And so we would sort of joke about the prospects of danger, but of course we knew all along that this danger was a very real possibility.
Meanwhile, I was working on my own paper called “Our Living Guru.” I had been circulating earlier copies of it in 1984, and was still in the process of refining it. I had tried to make it somewhat subdued in tone, whereas Sulochana’s writings were a bit strident, to say the least. He would just blurt out things like: “Kirtanananda is not a guru but a demon who needs to be corrected with violence.” I tried to say that this was not going to be effective writing, could we please use “Our Living Guru’s” style of commentary?, but he always refused. He wanted his hard copy to be as hard as nails, and it was. We have been pleasantly surprised to discover, later on, that most of the key quotes used in “Our Living Guru” were subsequently used by other Krishna dissidents in their writings, and that the key letters quoted by Sulochana in his “Guru Business” were also used in these later documents.
Meanwhile, Suochana had been in touch with the “ISKCON justices department,” devotees like Rupanuga dasa and Mukunda swami. They listened patiently to Sulochana’s complaints and they agreed that having his children kidnapped was a serious offense on the part of Kirtanananda. Yet, they were also sypathetic to supporting the worship of Kirtanananda’s homosexual guru regime. Therefore the “ISKCON justices” made a very muddled decree, Sulochana had some good points, on the other hand, he is offending a great devotee like Kirtanananda. Of course they mainly sympathized with Kirtanananda, they were just trying to get the persistent Sulochana off their backs. Indeed, a short while later the “ISKCON reformers” officially excommunicated Sulochana for his attacks on Kirtanananda.
1985 Sulochana part two (ref: 1985 part 2, 05. Apr. 2000)
By the middle of 1985 Hansadutta was getting very nervous about my preaching work in the Berkeley temple. It was gaining ground very rapidly, and we were convincing “one person after the next” to become “disciples of Srila Prabhupada.” We had convinced maybe 40 people in the temple and maybe another 40 or 50 people from the visiting congregation by this time. As a side note, most of these people have kept the idea intact that they are still disciples of Srila Prabhupada, even to the present day. When some of them see me they give me the “thumbs up sign.”
Simultaneously, Sulochana started hanging around Berkeley with me and he could give a very powerful presentation of quotes from Srila Prabhupada’s letters to support our view that the GBC’s gurus are bogus. Although Hansadutta had retreated to the Hopland farm, he kept hearing reports that we were gathering momentum. We also heard reports that Hansadutta was simultaneously personally deteriorating in various ways. He was alleged to have had problems such as: Getting very upset and shooting at his pile of beer cans in front of his house; Almost starting the farm on fire by driving around in a tractor with burning rags behind it; A male disciple allegedly wanted to kill him when he discovered that Hansadutta was having sex with his wife, and so on and so forth.
That we were making progress while he was slipping had become intolerable for him. So I was not too suprised to hear the big announcement one day that Hansadutta was going to visit New Vrindavana to “take shelter” of Kirtanananda swami. That means that he and Kirtanananda had decided to try to put a halt to our preaching that Srila Prabhupada is the guru for ISKCON and thus: to squash me and Sulochana. Hansadutta started to say that Kirtanananda is the only pure devotee in ISKCON, and the Berkeley followers should join him in taking shelter there.
Of course Hansadutta was well aware that Kirtanananda was not pure at all, but a highly dubious person at best. He had tried to take-over ISKCON in the early days, and he had defied Srila Prabhupada in so many ways. And he was alleged to have defied Srila Prabhupada once to run back to his homosexual friends, which had upset Srila Prabhupada. And Hansadutta must have known this because he too was an early devotee. In short, Hansadutta knew that Kirtanananda held a grudge against Srila Prabhupada and so to him, that was pure? This was what I would sometimes call “The Homosexual Guru Pharisee’s Club.” And of course Srila Prabhupada refers to the “sinister movement being within our movement,” as early as 1970, which refers to these take-over minded fools.
In short, it seems that Hansadutta wanted to make the maverick homosexual guru Kirtanananda into an ally and eventually bring him back to Berkeley, and then fully establish their homosexual pedophile worshipping cult there as a means of driving us out. And as it turned out, that was the plan. Yet we had made enough allies in Berkeley by this time to thwart Hansadutta’s plan, including the then GBC for San Francisco, Atreya Rsi. Atreya hired a lawyer to stop Kirtanananda’s people from getting their names on the legal papers of the temple. As such, Atreya Rsi saved the building from being a homosexual pedophile cult worshipping project, which it would have been to this day. As a matter of interest, Berkeley is still one of the few temples in the world which allows and encourages Prabhupadanugas to visit at the present time. You could say that we tried to liberate it?
Of course all this occured at the height of child molestation in ISKCON and New Vrindavana as well, and it was also very PUBLICLY evident that Kirtanananda was a homosexual pedophile at that time. He was always driving around with a boy on his lap, he was covered with the hands of maybe fifty boys in his public worship, and there were small boys jumping in and out of his cottage all day long –with the adults ordered to stay away. There were also many other alleged homosexuals living at New Vrindavana at the time. There were also other alleged homosexuals there such as a school teacher named Sri Galim. Sulochana said at the time that New Vrindavana was “crawling with homosexuals.” So this was the place Hansadutta wanted people to “take shelter of”?
Worse, Hansadutta knew all about the violent kidnapping of Sulochana’s boys and other horrors going on there. Yet, when cult leaders become desperate they will stoop to almost anything, even if it means supporting a homosexual’s being worshipped as good as God. Of course, Hansadutta was also made into a Krishna devotee in the later 1960s, so he probably knew all about the “Mott Street Boys” alleged gay house that Kirtanananda had come from. Sulochana used to call Kirtanananda and his allies like Hansadutta, “Faggot-pada and his boot lickers.”
So I told this all to Sulochana and we had quite a good laugh over it. Sulochana said, “Well at least Hansadutta now admits he would rather see people worship a homosexual than Srila Prabhupada.” I replied, “Well not only that, but most GBC would rather see people worship a bucket of dog stools than worship Srila Prabhupada.” Sulochana argued immediately, “What? You kidding me? The GBC would never recommend the worship of a bucket of stools! Can a bucket of stools kill any devotees? Nope! Can it molest followers? Nope. A bucket of stools is WAY too advanced, WAY too high class, for them. It is WAY out of their league prabhu, it is WAY! …too pure.” And then we would slap our knees and laugh for five minutes.
Meanwhile, the GBC was having other troubles with the so-called “50 man committee to reform ISKCON.” This was basically a group of lower echelon leaders who wanted to be “voted in as gurus” by the first wave of deviants. For example one of the leaders of the “50 man committee” was Trivrikrama swami. He said, “You guys had your chance (to be the worshipped saints of ISKCON) and now its our turn.” This is kind of like seeing that the driver of your bus has had one too many drinks, and then grabbing the wheel from him and taking over the bus. The idea almost sounds good, except that, how could you get certified as a “good driver” by the drunk driver? How could a totally bogus guru, if not a child molester, certify “the next wave” of pure devotees? This has never been explained ever, by the “50 man committee” folks? This idea will not even work for a mundane bus driver’s post, and this is certainly not how you “take over” the post of being a pure devotee guru like Jesus?
So there was a very vicious fight going on between the “old guard,” mainly the eleven original “appointed gurus,” and the upstart “50 man committee of reformers” who wanted to be certified as gurus –by the old guard. A devotee named Sri Kanta said at the time, “The guru disease has now become an epidemic.” There was a meeting held in New Vrindavana in October, 1985, to try to sort out a compromise between the gurus and the guru wanna-be sector. Sulochana went to nearby Wheeling, West Virginia, with hopes to make some impact for his case, but instead he got temporarily arrested when New Vrindavana inmates reported that “a violent man” was in town. He was released, but the whole episode was a let down for him because he could see that many of his God brothers, especially those who had attended that meeting, did not care much that a homosexual was sitting in Srila Prabhupada’s seat. Indeed all that most of them wanted was for themselves to sit in Srila Prabhupada’s seat in another location, and to get a guru rubber stamp from the deviants if not homosexuals. Of course, meanwhile none of them seem to be worried about the position of the women, children, cows and other citizens who were being victimized by the whole program?
One of the supporters of the idea that many more gurus should be certified was named Triyogi dasa: Michael Shockman. He wanted to become the next guru for the state of Ohio, sort of replacing Kirtanananda. Yet Kirtanananda was very much opposed to the whole reform program, and he wanted no new gurus in his “zone.” Oddly, Kirtanananda was also quoting some of the same arguments we gave; The guru is not made by rubber stamps, votes, temple president’s consensus, a show of hands of GBC quorum, and so on. The guru is “self-effulgent.” And so Kirtanananda was seen as a major obstacle to “the reform of ISKCON,” i.e. rubber stamping another fifty people as the next wave of imitations of Srila Prabhupada.
Of course once again this was fodder for me and Sulochana to make countless jokes. “Oh, have you got your GBC guru certificate in the mail yet Puranjana? You have to mail in three boxtops from a pack of condoms to get one. I just got mine and it has some sticky goo on it? Do you think I need to handle it with rubber gloves”?
Around this time, Ravindra Swarupa and Radhanatha swami came to visit Berkeley to try to deal with the crisis there. I thought, “Here is an odd couple? Radhanatha is Kirtanananda’s right hand man, and he thinks that his swami is as pure as Jesus? Whereas Ravindra Swarupa does not like Kirtanananda at all because he is trying to impeded the vote to make some of the 50 man committee into more mini-Prabhupadas”? We then had a meeting and Ravindra started by saying, “In this room are the most moderate and intelligent devotees in the movement.” Huh? We all knew that I was considered as a total “Prabhupada fanatic” and not a so-called moderate. Radhanatha was also considered to be a Kirtanananda fanatic. So right away I got the impression that Ravindra was a liar and a politician, in sum, just the kind of guy whom the GBC would vote in as a guru. And later on they did, when they simultaneously recoronated another one of their homosexual pedophile gurus, Bhavananada, in March of 1986.
As the meeting progressed Ravindra hinted about his plan to save ISKCON be having another wave of leaders certified as Srila Prabhupada’s next wave of gurus. He called this his “guru reform.” I thought, “Oh good, he is going to have gurus who are coming from reform schools and jails, really good plan.” Ravindra said that these newer gurus were going to be the “better gurus” because their worship was not going to be so elaborate. Right away I thought, “Why should we have gurus that we cannot worship? The whole Vedic process is to worship the guru as good as God? Does this mean that sometimes God is reduced, and so we have reduced ‘as good as God’ worship? So why not worship an old shoe then? And old shoe is a ‘reduced’ part of God? I still don’t get their idea? Something is as good as God, therefore it has to be –reduced in stature? Are we not supposed to –emphasize– something that is as good as God? Why reduce? This one hundred dollar bill will only purchase one dollar of goods. All right, so it is counterfeit?
“This man is making no sense at all? They are going to be gurus, but they are not going to be worshipped as gurus? They are really janitors, and they will be performing brain surgery, but yet they are not really brain surgeons either? Who will accept this? Srila Prabhupada says you always have to worship the guru as good as God, but we GBC say we sometimes have to worship him as good as –Fred the trash collector. Huh”?
Ravindra has never made any sense to me since then either, except he did write a paper later saying that since most of the devotees were taking drugs and having illicit sex in the 1970s, they would continue these activities when they became gurus. Yes, the reason we have to burn people at the stake is that the Pope is now Jesus’ living spokesman, but he still has not given up his old habits from before he became Jesus’ spokesman? Of course I would then ask, “How is he Jesus’ spokesman if he has still not given up his old habits”? No one has ever answered these types of questions for a simple reason, there is no good answer. Ravindra kept flashing his Cheshire cat grin during the meeting while deflecting various questions and in sum he appeared to be a cheezy politician.
Radhanatha on the other hand was a lot more subdued and serious. He knew that this Sulochana problem could blow up in their faces and so he kept asking me what he could do to pacify Sulochana. I told him that he had to move the children to a neutral location and give Sulochana access, bare minimum, and without that there would be no basis for further talks. He promised he would try to do that, while simultaneously he gave me a sort of warning at the end, “I do consider Kirtanananda to be a great devotee and I think it is a mistake for Sulochana to challenge him like this.”
Meanwhile, Triyogi was getting very angry at Kirtanananda for “holding up his guru certification.” Apparently word got around that the GBC was going to “cave in” to the “50 man committee” and give anywhere from 20 to 40 new guru certificates at the 1986 Mayapura meeting, but one had to get permission and recommendation from the local guru first. Kirtanananda just was not going to give in. So Triyogi and Kirtanananda got into a big argument one day. Triyogi demanded that Kirtanananda give him his guru recommendation. When Kirtanananda refused once again, Triyogi picked up a large, heavy piece of pipe and bashed Kirtanananda over the head, almost killing him.
After Kirtanananda was assaulted, the GBC tried to make it appear that a great saint had been attacked just like Jesus was crucified. Leaders from all over poured into New Vrindavana to offer support and condolences. Of course, this was a good opportunity for them to blame Sulochana for the attack and perhaps spawn an attack on him. So the rumor was started that Sulochana was good friends with Triyogi and that they had planned the attack. This made no sense to the intelligent observer however. Triyogi wanted to get “voted in as a guru” and Sulochana, well, he hated the idea that a guru could be rubber stamped. Sulochana also said that if a person got a guru rubber stamp from Kirtanananda he would be, “A certified faggot, not just a regular faggot.”
And Sulochana also thought that Triyogi was “a jerk” and not a person who was qualified to be voted in as a guru. Similarly, Triyogi disagreed with our idea that guru voting is foolish and bogus. Also, if the attack had been “planned,” why did Triyogi attack in the open in front of eye-witnesses, and especially when there were a number of Kirtanananda’s followers nearby –who could have killed him in retaliation? This was not a planned attack, this was a spontaneous outburst of extreme anger. If Triyogi was so attached to our idea, why did he not contact us then or since?
Anyway, by December 1985, Hansadutta officially backed Kirtanananda and moved to New Vrindavana. Then he made an effort to totally black-ball and scuttle the Berkeley temple by telling everyone there that they should move to New Vrindavana, and essentially abandon the Berkeley temple. Sink the ship after we pirates have pillaged and raped it –that was the policy. And if the temple was totally incapacitated, then Hansadutta and Kirtanananda could come back later and attack it more easily, as they actually tried to do later on.
This is of course very typical of some of the GBC management thinking. Will there be anyone left to care for the deities? Who cares, we only care that there will be enough people around to care for the “guru.” The people in the temple are not Krishna’s servants, they are Hansadutta’s servants. And worse, Hansaduutta de facto said that all of you should quit serving Krishna and start serving –a homosexual pedophile posing as Krishna’s successor? That is the superior method of service? Quit serving Krishna so you can start serving a violent pedophile worshipping cult’s leader –who thinks he is as pure as Krishna? This was the type of insanity that we faced in the year of 1985 with the “pure as Jesus leaders” of the Krishna movement.
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PART 3 – 1986 – Iskcon worships homosexual gurus, Sulocana murdered, Kirtanananda massaged by small boys
History 1986.1 (ref: 1986.1, 06. Apr. 2000)
As 1986 started the GBC’s gurus were under fire from a variety of sources. Ramesvara was alleged to be dating a minor aged female student and this was causing friction in Los Angeles. Bhagavan was under scrutiny in Europe for allegedly spending time on the French Riviera. Bhavananda was under investigation for homosexuality. And of course Kirtanananda was facing a stiff expose from Sulochana. Meanwhile, although it was not a major problem, my presence in Berkeley was duly noted as a source of aggravation for the GBC’s hard core big gurus. And there were many other troubles.
The fact that Kirtanananda was going to embrace Hansadutta and welcome him into his zone was not a cause of joy for the GBC camp either. Here were two volatile mavericks joining together, perhaps, to plot some schemes against the other GBC gurus. And it was well known at that time that neither of them cared a fig for the other GBC’s authority. Indeed, neither of them care for GBC’s directives even up to the present time. Meanwhile, the fifty man committee was pushing to get voted in as the next wave of mini-Prabhupadas and they were causing a lot of friction. So there was a lot of pressure to get many of these things resolved at the 1986 Mayapura meeting.
I met with Vipramukhya swami at the then San Francisco temple near Golden Gate Park and he assured me that this year at Mayapura they were going to finally put a lid on the GBC’s guru “Bhavananda,” and finally take firm action on his homosexuality problem. Vipramukhya told me he was part of the official GBC “investigation team” that had found that Bhavananda was indeed going to gay bars and so on and so forth. This was going to be presented to the GBC and tough action against Bhavananda was expected. I told Vipramukhya that having homosexuals worshipped as Srila Prabhupada’s successors was so disgusting I had no idea it would ever come to this state, and I was hoping it would be fixed and soon.
I said that in my experience as a Bay Area taxi-cab driver, driving all over the city of San Francisco, I had picked up many homosexual patrons, and none of them thought that they should worship another homosexual as if he was like Jesus? Even they had some higher standards than the GBC it seemed? I had even picked up one homosexual man who was constantly kissing his huge dog, but he had spoken respectfully about Jesus. Why couldn’t the GBC do the same?
The January 1986 “Back To Godhead” magazine contained the article “A Tribute To A Pure Devotee” which glorified Kirtanananda’s “pipe on the head attack” as something similar to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The article said that Kirtanananda was attacked just like Jesus Christ, Haridasa Thakura and Prahlad had been. For me and Sulochana this article looked like a method of getting us attacked, perhaps even killed. We were both saying that Kirtanananda is a homosexual, he is a deviant, and he is certainly not a guru.
Meanwhile, the GBC was saying: here is a person like Jesus? That was easily interpreted as: me and Sulochana are envious blasphemers of Jesus, or someone equal to Jesus? Sulochana said, “Puranjana, did you see this? This article by Satsvarupa, it paints a big bull’s eye target on my back. He is making it look like I am criticizing Jesus, Haridasa Thakura and Prahlad.” So we discussed this and began to call this article, “Our Death Certificate.” It was the GBC’s way of fanning fanatical action against us, and it could be severe.
Satsvarupa had also wrote in his public “Journals” that someone (we all know it was Sulochana) was “a poison pen who was attacking ISKCON” and so on. So the GBC rhetoric against us at this time was getting more venemous, strident and public. “You know those guys Sulochana and Puranjana, well did you hear the news, they hate Kirtanananda, and he is like Jesus”? Of course in reality, Kirtanananda was molesting boys in his motorhome at this point in time. I reminded Sulochana that Satsvarupa is the main liar who had masterminded the bogus guru appointment, so he might get desperate and write even worse things.
Clearly, the homosexual guru worshipping party was aligning to check our idea that Srila Prabhupada should be worshipped instead. Whether it was Kirtanananda, Hansadutta, Satsvarupa, the fifty man committee, or even the so-called local San Francisco area self advertised “moderates,” many disliked our idea and many of them all ended up directly or indirectly in support of, or at least compromised with, with the worship of homosexuals as “the pure devotee guru sucessors to God Almighty. Krishna.” Yet when I tried to point out the defects of Satsvarupa’s article to some of my “moderate” brothers, they said “Oh, you are not going to blaspheme Satsvarupa again are you”? Satvarupa was sort of a sacred cow at this point, even though everyone knew he was supporting the homosexual guru sabha. Not many people cared for the truth, it was “which political party do you support”?
And moreover now they are openly saying that these homosexual pedophiles are “people like Jesus”? I thought, “I have never seen such an assemblage of absolutely deviant, sick, perverts in my entire existence. I have never even read or heard about such people who were vastly worse than the Satanists? They will militantly force teeny innocent children to worship homosexual pedophiles as good as God? So it is a great honor for me to be fighting against them.” On some spontaneous fun, I had my Tarot card reading done while walking down the weekly street fair in Berkely. The woman said, “Very unusual, you are a lone knight in the center. The death card is very near the center.”
Meanwhile, a female devotee (GD) arrived in Berkeley from Texas. She immediately began to tell me her tales of woe in dealing with Tamal in Dallas. It seems that her two boys were molested at the Oklahoma farm run by Tamal, yet Tamal did not help her curb that problem. Instead, he got very angry at her. Eventually, she was so disgusted and also worried for the welfare of her boys that she gave Tamal an ultimatum to help her out. Instead, Tamal kicked her and her boys out on the street and he ordered his followers “don’t give her a penny” after she had given Tamal hundreds of thousands of dollars. I advised her to get a good lawyer and sue Tamal for damages, which she did. Tamal was alleged to have had a nervous breakdown from her case. She won the case, and it shows that if more people had her kind of courage, the molestation problem could have been reigned in more substantially by external means, since there does not seem to be much of an internal checks and balances.
Just before the 1986 Mayapura meeting, I visited the then GBC Atreya Rsi to see what he felt about the upcoming meeting. Atreya was more inclined to help the fifty man committe who wanted to get voted in as the next wave of gurus, while he viewed me and Sulochana as extremists. “It is not black and white,” he was fond of telling me. Of course I would then argue, “OK, tell me one white thing about worshipping homosexuals”? Atreya’s other devotee associates felt the same way. They would say, “Oh, oh, here he comes, it is Puranjana, the homosexual guru fighter. Hey, hey, hey.” They did not think this was a serious problem.
I also felt that Atreya made a mistake going to visit Kirtanananda after his pipe attack. We should not support or show solidarity with these homosexual gurus, that was always my point. On the topic of Bhavananda, Atreya agreed there was no room to compromise. He had to go. “One thing I always notice,” said Atreya looking very stern, “as soon as we (GBC) go after Bhavananda, Tamal steps in and protects him. Well that is not going to happen this time! Bhavananda is out! And if Tamal stands up to protect him (and then Atreya made a gesture like he was pulling two six guns out of holsters on his hips) then he gets it! Bang, bang, bang”! I said, “If they keep Bhavananda in as Srila Prabhupada’s successor guru, you have to resign Atreya. Let us make this place independent. No homosexual worship pooja.” Anyway, there was a lot of jockeying for position, all kinds of cross purpose agendas, a lot of anger, resentment, attachment, lamentation, and general chaos in the mood of the upcoming March, 1986 Mayapura meeting. The cult meltdown was happening and they did not even know it.
Of course, I thought the whole Mayapura program this year was going to be a big waste of time and money. They were not going to address the original deviation, that Srila Prabhupada had never ordered folks like Kirtanananda, Bhavananda, Tamal and similar others, to be worshipped as “Krishna’s pure devotee successors.” To be Krishna’s successor is not some joke that can be undertaken by a person who is barely able to withdraw from being a disciple of Andy Warhol and Timothy Leary. So the whole meeting had to me the mood of re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Useless.
It did not take us long to find out that at the GBC meeting they had re-instated Bhavananda as a full-fledged guru. He was being worshipped as “Vishnupada”: “one whose feet are as pure as God’s.” This proved they were either atheists or incredible perverts. A sexual attacker of children is equal to God? And they knew he was a homosexual, they had reports that he is a homosexual, and then they re-instated him knowingly –to be worshipped as good as God? Vishnu’s padas? And Prithu, Bir Krishna, Ravindra swarupa and others were also voted in as God’s successors at the same meeting? And wasn’t Bhavananda bringing in many other homosexuals into posts of authority in ISKCON? And weren’t some of them taking up post as teachers of small boys? And wasn’t this an alarming trend? Nope. We just want to be voted in as gurus, we don’t care about our society’s boys, or anyone else. We just see the other vultures having a feast eating Srila Prabhupada’s body, ISKCON, and we are going to elbow our way into their party.
Once again it showed how desperate things had become. People were willing to compromise the truth in any way required so that they could swoop in and join the other vultures who were exploiting Srila Prabhupada’s society and eating up his children alive by mass starving, beating and molestation. Here were people who were worse than any blood sucking zombie’s movies you had seen, since they were doing their evil deeds in the name of “Vishnupada” whereas regular zombies at least have no connection to God or they openly serve Satan. So the whole mood was very greedy, very behind the scenes deal making and so on, with the molester’s guru project emerging as saints. And the molester guru sabha was now joining forces with the so-called “reformers” to officially declare that sexual rapers of children are equal to God.
And no doubt a new “purge of doubters” was in the works. So me and Sulochana were now joking, “The zombies are coming”! Of course we also knew that those who compromised with this would get the karma of supporting the worship of known homosexuals as good as God. So we really did not care if we would be killed or not, we had been spared from the worst thing already, going along to get along with pervert worship, the worst thing one can do humanly possible.
And at the same time I felt that this was all for the best, this was the darkest hour of the movement and it could only start to improve from this point onwards. And this has proven to be correct. It is sort of like: an alcoholic has to reach rock bottom before he realizes he has to go back up. Of course, I also knew that this did not mean either me, Sulochana, or both of us, would be spared from potentially getting murdered. There was a mad cult frenzy of envious jockeying for new positions in the air, and it was going to take a while for it to subside.
At the time the GBC announced that they had reinstated Bhavananda, according to Makhanal, there was a sudden burst of high winds followed by black storm clouds. The wind picked up inside a hut where someone was cooking and the hut started on fire. The the dogs started barking, the cows were mooing forlornly. It was known that the reinstatement of a known homosexual to be worshipped by children was the most severe sin, and it was not approved of by the higher authorities. Yet everyone was just silent as the wind passed over, they knew it was a dark sign. Yet they were thinking about getting back to their zones to start their own worship so they overlooked the obvious.
Meanwhile, Kirtanananda’s party was very dipleased by the whole spectrum of events. Kirtanananda was not going to become the next rising moon of ISKCON as they had planned. There were fresh new faces at the vulture’s table. Sulochana was tearing Kirtanananda’s reputation down. Puranjana was in Berkeley creating a storm over the whole homosexual guru issue. The new fifty man committe’s gurus wanted to start invading the existing zones.
It was time for the empire to strike back. First they would kill Sulochana, and then shortly thereafter, Puranjana. That would be a good start to re-assert their power. Yes, this would be a wake up call for all sides to get off Kirtanananda’s tail and to recognize who the real boss of ISKCON was. Besides, Kirtanananda was now strengthened with a new ally who had a host of criminals in his camp, Hansadutta. Now was the time to show the whole world who the real guru was, and besides the GBC had just said he was Jesus? Of course, nevermind that he was molesting boys in his motorhome.
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Very biased article! Full of deceit and innuendo and self-praise by the cult deviant Puranajan and his Gopi bhava club. He later went ahead and blamed Srila Prabhupada for child abuse in the Movement. I suspect he is crazy or a cia controlled opposition.